Grant Cole from Motorola shows us a new 3G version of the Razor. The phone also has a new application that gives them zero click access to their data services.
Grant Cole: Hi, I am Grant Cole with Motorola.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Motorola, the company that makes phones like razor
and what not?
Grant Cole: Phones like Razr, yes. Today we got Razr here that’s a 3G version
of the Razr, with the special applications that a client to server application
it is meant to drive data revenues for operators.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So, how are you doing that?
Grant Cole: Well what we do is we take the phone screen, at the bottom of it
we put a ticker on there and our end-to-end solution has the phone updated on
regular basis throughout the day, depending on what the users chosen to signup
for. The key here that is we put a ticker right on the main screen of the
phone, all the user needs to do is open up their phone and they have zero
click access to data services. One of the big problems that operators have had
is that they spend a lot of time and money introducing different services, but
nobody knows about them and they are very hard to find. This enables an
operator to drive awareness of those services right to the home screen of the
phone and be able to speak to the consumer on a daily basis.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So, it seems like it’s a mobile version of RSS
almost…
Grant Cole: Very similar to RSS, one thing that good at it’s a mobile specific
type of RSS syndication. One thing that’s different is RSS you download all of
the assets for a given channel, every single time you get an update, that
doesn’t make lot of sense on mobile. With this we are able identify within
logos and CSS files that type of thing that are reused on an ongoing basis.
It’s only downloaded once, minimizing the cost of what the operator has to
pay.
Benjamin Higginbotham: It sounds like you can do dynamic media with that
as well. For example, we’ve got our mobile site we have 3GP RTSP streams,
could I embed that into the banner at the bottom or at least to have a link to
it, so you could open it up in the player?
Grant Cole: Yes absolutely, we are able to support cashing of XHML WAP 2.0
content that includes 4 full XHML mobile, including CSS, so you have the
content providers have the very good control over their branding and what they
can do from a graphical presentation. Within that obviously, with XHML we have
the ability to have links. It is not just HTTP links, you can do RTSP linking
and even send SMS messages and other things like that. So, it’s a very wide
variety of multimedia experiences from that.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So, who controls this? Is this gonna be just
something where the advertisers or just gonna set pushing adds to me
constantly or …
Grant Cole: No, this is an operator service. So the operator, they have the
dashboard, they control what content is in the catalog. So, that is the user I
can go and customize this services as I like. They also got the ability to
send down some advertising, they like the idea of being able to advertise what
new services they are spending time rolling out. As a subscriber I might find
value in that, because otherwise how would I know about it.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So, when I get the phone I am gonna have bunch of
preset channels setup and I as a user don’t like that, I can change that and I
can get rid of what they’ve got there?
Grant Cole: Again, depending on the different operator and how they do it. We
sell this worldwide as we get the variety of different operator types, but
generally speaking their ability to personalize your phone service and you
experience the data services on your phone, its seen by everybody is very
important to you. You are using the phone as your private interface.
Benjamin Higginbotham: But, the content itself is controlled through the
operator, so an independent blog publisher couldn’t just automatically move
their content there, unless that operator set, you know what blog publishers
can give us their content?
Grant Cole: Right, at this point it’s very much controlled by the operator. As
we look forward in time Motorola are working to try enable more direct, as a
subscriber I can go out and choose what content I get, even beyond what the
operator made necessarily want, but that’s coming in due time.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think that’s an interesting way to bring rich
Text in media, to the general user. Rather than I am to get the big huge smart
phone and carry that around?
Grant Cole: Yeah.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think it’s a lot of fun.
Grant Cole: Yeah, thank you. .
Benjamin Higginbotham: Thank you so much for your time.
Grant Cole: Alright.
